cultivating safety

There's no question that our childhood experiences, all of our life experiences, are imprinted on our brains. We have memory. We have explicit and implicit memory. We have subconscious memory. We have emotional memory, and all those memories can make one feel safer or less safe. It can make one feel more trusting or less trusting. the people who have disruptive childhoods are much more likely to develop mind body syndromes are much more likely to develop physical ailments as well later in life. that's been shown very clearly in the adverse childhood event studies and many other studies. However, we exist in our past and we exist in our presence.

what we found is that you can help people heal and recover in their present and in their past. modern medicine hasn't really understood or taken on this. a lot of psychological therapies I would also suggest have not taken on because it's not just cognitive processes that are necessary to heal people. It is also emotional processes.

many ways of helping people feel safe

there's many ways of helping people feel safe, cognitively in their lives in the present, but it's often necessary to help them feel safer in their past by using emotional processes such as memory reconsolidation processes to help people heal some of the hurts from their past.

What do you mean?

Well, memory reconsolidation. The idea is that we can't change our past, obviously. But how do we know what our past is? We only know our past because of our memories of it and memory is constantly changing. This is a scientific fact. We don't have memory like some video camera. We have memory pockets and emotional pockets of information.

Go back to the past and heal it

There's ways of helping people in fantasy go back in time to visit their younger selves, or express feelings from their younger selves, or ways of imagining changing the situation, changing the memories purposely to help them feel more empowered, help them feel safer, help them to express feelings that they couldn't express then, help them deal with the anger that they felt, the guilt that they felt, the sadness that they felt and help them move move through those feelings, to have compassion for themselves, caring for themselves, letting go and forgiveness. And when you do those things, they're healing their past, which helps them to heal their presence.

it is a visualization technique

yes  but you applied it  on the past, not on the future. It's the idea that we hold our whole life is held within us.  so our child is held within us, and that's healing the child that was within us and the parts of us that are child parts, the parts of us that are parental parts.  so everyone has different parts of themselves.  sometimes those parts feel like they're at war or they're fighting with us or they're betraying us. But the idea is to move toward integrating those parts and being at peace with our past with ourselves and with the different parts of us that we carry with us.

Question: Let's take an example, a concrete example. If a child back then had a critical caregiver and he lived a normal childhood, no abuse, no physical, no sexual abuse, nothing big, not a big trauma. But he lives with criticism because this was the way of his parents to show love and to Hone the child for life challenges to come. practically. How would such a child go back to his past and heal this?

create a new experience  your younger version

You can simply ask the person to summon the parts of themselves currently that are caring and kind and loving and strong and courageous and then mentally go back in time and visit their self when they were eight years old or twelve years old or whatever. And they imagine meeting that person who's themselves and they can feel what that person was feeling, what their younger self was feeling, the emotions that they were feeling, the hurt, the sadness, the anger, the depression, the fear. then they can empathize with that person and  then give that person in this imaginary scenario what they needed, which was love and caring and compassion and give them the opportunity to express their feelings.  they can help them imagine doing whatever it is they need to do so they can create a new experience for that person that younger version of themselves, who is empowered, who cares for themselves, who can stand up for themselves. Maybe the person wants to talk back to their parents or scream at their parents or tie their parents up or make their mouth shut or push them out of the house or whatever. it is that they need to imagine doing. Or maybe they need to ask their parents to just love them and hold them and hug them.  then your adult self is hugging that person and caring for that person and letting them cry scream or do whatever they need to do.  maybe you take them to a beach and you laugh and you give them space and you ask if they can let go of their hurts. it's a variety of things that people have learned over the years to help heal the big trauma.

you carry all this hurt from childhood in your body 

when you take away some of the hurt and guilt and anger from the child and the adult who's in current life in present times can also feel relief and begin to realize that they're okay in the present that they are safe now. They don't have to carry around all this hurt and mistrust as much, and they can practice as I mentioned before self compassion now- in the present. they're healing their past and they're healing their present at the same time

immersed in the fight flight freeze

question :  how would you approach such a person who is so immersed in the fight flight freeze and he's kind of hooked in this emergency state of being? How would you access his brain and train it and reprogram his brain to feel safe again?

start with listening to the little child in you

start with compassion. You start with compassion and caring and love for that person. You start with understanding. You start with listening to them and allowing them to talk and tell their story, and you listen to that story and you help them see the issues that have occurred and are occurring in their life. And you help them to begin to be compassionate to themselves.  as you do that, you can then help them understand what the story means and change the story. Help them change the narrative from one of fear and mistrust to understanding and caring and help them see that of course, their brain is going to be afraid. Of course they're going to not be trusting. Of course they're going to be living in fight or flight because of what happened to them and then help them see that their current diagnoses are not dangerous. If that's the case, if they don't have clear structural problems, then you can help reassure them currently that their body is not damaged.  then you give them techniques and help them to reduce the fear of the pain or of their symptoms. And then you help them to see what they can do in their lives to help them be connected and safer and happier now in their lives.

it all starts with listening

gradually over time, you can help them to heal, heal emotionally they have to re conceptualize their story as one which makes sense and to help empower them that they can do something about it. And it all starts with listening. It all starts with understanding. It all starts with compassion.